Contents

Water
quality

The quality of groundwater or surface water is a major problem
in China, be it because of man-made pollution or natural
contamination.

Advertisements

Pollution

The first turn of the Yangtze at Shigu (石鼓), Yunnan Province. According to the Chinese
Environmental Agency the Yangtze River, a major source of drinking
water supply, has fairly good water quality despite
pollution.

According to China's State Environmental Protection Agency
(SEPA) in 2006 60% of the country's rivers suffer from pollution to
such an extent that they cannot be used as drinking water sources.
There has been no significant improvement on the previous year.[1]

According to the 2008 State of the Environment Report by the
Ministry of Environmental Protection, the successor agency of SEPA,
pollution of specific rivers is as follows:

Nevertheless, according to SEPA, the water quality in the
central drinking water sources for major cities was "mainly
good".[3]

There have been a high number of river pollution incidents in
recent years in China, including the high profile Songhua River toxic
chemical spill in November 2005 following an explosion at a Jilin chemical plant in November, 2005, and
drinking water source pollution by algae in the Tai Lake, Wuxi in May 2007. In the latter case there was a
"bloom of blue-green algae that gave off a rotten smell" shutting
off the main source of drinking water supply to 5.8 million people.
By September 2007, the city had closed or given notice to close
more than 1,340 polluting factories. The city ordered the rest to
clean up by June or be permanently shut down. The closing of the
factories resulted in a 15% reduction of local GDP.[4] The
severe pollution had been known for many years, but factories had
been allowed to continue to operate until the crisis erupted.

According to a 2007 report by the World Bank, the pollution
scandals demonstrate that, if not immediately and effectively
controlled, pollution releases can spread across boundaries of
administrative jurisdictions, causing "environmental and economic
damage as well as public concern and the potential for social
unease". Once an accident has occurred, the impact on the
environment and human health becomes more difficult and more costly
to control. Therefore, the report recommends prevention of
pollution by strict enforcement of appropriate policies and
regulations.[5]

Natural
contamination

Large portions of China's aquifers suffer from arsenic contamination
of groundwater. Arsenic poisoning occurs after
long-term exposure to contaminated groundwater through drinking.
The phenomenon was first detected in China in the 1950s. As water
demand grows, wells are being drilled deeper and now frequently tap
into arsenic-rich aquifers. As a consequence, arsenic poisoning is
rising. To date there have been more than 30,000 cases reported
with about 25 million people exposed to dangerously high levels in
their drinking water. [6]

According to the WHO over 26 million people in China suffer
from dental
fluorosis (weakening of teeth) due to elevated fluoride in their drinking
water. In addition, over 1 million cases of skeletal
fluorosis (weakening of bones) are thought to be attributable
to drinking water. [7] High
levels of fluoride occur in groundwater and defluoridation is in
many cases unaffordable.

Water
quantity

Supply

China's water resources include 2,711.5 cubic kilometers of mean
annual run-off in its rivers and 828.8 cubic kilometers of
groundwater recharge, as of about 2000. As pumping water draws
water from nearby rivers, the total available resource is less than
the sum of surface and groundwater, or 2,821.4 cubic kilometers.
80.9 per cent of these resources are in the Yangtze River
basin.[8]

Demand

Total water withdrawals were estimated at 525.5 cubic kilometers
in 1993, or 20% of renewable resources. This average however masks
important temporal and spatial variations in supply. Demand is from
the following sectors:

Water
balance

Over-extraction of groundwater and falling water tables are
big problems in China, particularly in the north. According to the
Ministry of Construction, preliminary
statistics show that there are more than 160 areas nationwide where
groundwater has been over-exploited with an average annual
groundwater depletion of more than 10 billion cubic meters. As a
result, more than 60,000 square kilometers of ground surface have
sunk with more than 50 cities suffering from serious land subsidence.[9] There
is also increasing competition for surface water and the Yellow River is so
over-exploited that in many years it does not reach any more the
Sea. Flooding also still is a
major problem.

The development or diversion of major transboundary rivers
originating in China, such as the Brahmaputra River and the Mekong River, could be a source on tension
with China's neighbors. For example, after building two dams
upstream, China is building at least three more on the Mekong,
inflaming passions in Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia and Thailand. In a book titled
"Tibet's Waters Will Save China" a group of Chinese ex-officials
have championed the northward rerouting of the waters of the
Brahmaputra as an important lifeline for China in a future phase of
South-North Water Transfer Project. Such a
diversion could fuel tension with India and Bangladesh, if no prior agreement would be
reached on sharing the river's water.[10]

Management

Several authorities have responsibility for dealing with water.
Water pollution is the responsibility of the environmental
authorities, but surface water itself is managed by the Ministry of Water
Resources. Urban water supply and wastewater is dealt with by
the Ministry of Construction, but groundwater falls within the
realm of the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Ma Xiancong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences Institute of Law,[11]
identified these areas where the government failed to act, or
tacitly consented, approved or actively took part and so creating a
worse situation: Land appropriation, pollution, excessive mining
and the failure to carry out environmental impact assessments. An
example of this emerged in 2006, when the State Environmental Protection
Administration revealed over a dozen hydroelectric projects
that had broken the Environmental Impact Assessment Law.[12]